Market Access

What defines Market Access?

Presenting supportive clinical data is not always sufficient to enter and succeed in the marketplace; you also need strong health economic data and convincing cost-effectiveness arguments that differentiate your product and highlight the additional benefits it provides to specific patient groups.

Why us?

One of few digital healthcare agencies with in-house health economics and outcomes research skills, we have the ability to build complex, algorithm-based cost-effectiveness and budget impact models or turn existing models into powerful, interactive, bespoke apps. We can also combine data visualisation with demonstrations of real-world disease and treatment outcomes, thus helping commissioners and payors to make informed, evidence-based decisions that favour better patient care.

Need

Our client, a top 10 pharmaceutical company, has a treatment for diseases that can cause vision loss. Although NICE-approved, as ophthalmology places an increasing demand on CCG budgets, the treatment’s overall cost creates a challenge. To ensure commissioners provide sufficient capacity, our client wanted to clearly illustrate the budget impact alongside its relationship with positive patient treatment outcomes.

Solution

Utilising in-house HEOR, ophthalmology and UX expertise, we developed a comprehensive iOS commissioning “toolkit” that combines a budget impact model, real-world local evidence and a visual acuity simulation tool to effectively illustrate personalised budget impact and the actual effect on patient outcomes across four indications. Helping to enhance interactions between representatives and commissioners, the toolkit’s intuitive user interface and commissioner-adaptive configuration facilitate conversation fluidity, whilst its report-generating capabilities and commissioning asset library help to strengthen value arguments in favour of tailoring treatment protocol.

The custom reports the tool generates illustrate patient treatment pathways, which can help commissioners to visualise and assess hospital resource requirements per disease profile. Incorporating national guidelines, the reports can be built from scratch or can be adapted from existing pathways employed at centres of excellence.

Outcome

Since its launch, the commissioning toolkit has been used to generate hundreds of business cases that clearly illustrate the relationship between cost and positive patient outcomes. The app continues to support decisions that favour better standards of patient care.

This really helped us engage with customers, as it meets the current objectives of today’s commissioner, clinician and business manager.Brand Manager, Ophthalmology

Need

Demonstrating strong local cost-effectiveness arguments can be challenging. In order to demonstrate the local cost-effectiveness of its new urology product, our client had created a complex Markov model in Excel. With 173 pages, the user experience was far from effortless, so they approached us to create an iPad aid that would provide a more fluid user experience and help representatives to more effectively communicate the product’s cost-effectiveness.

Solution

Building upon the client’s existing model, our HEOR and UX teams worked closely to develop an interactive native iOS app, designed to help representatives engage payors and visually illustrate both cost efficiency and health outcomes in local markets. At the core of the tool is a complex algorithm that compiles and reformats thousands of lines of data, allowing the demonstration of infinite pharmacoeconomic scenarios. Multiple factors can be altered using simple finger gestures, changing outcomes in real time. Results are presented using clear and compelling charts and graphics. Unique user ID access enables the capture of scenarios that arise during conversations and reports to be generated for the user.

To ensure that the burden on the user is reduced and communication is clearly understood, we designed the tool with the principles of effective data visualisation in mind. The complex algorithm allows only relevant information to be surfaced and easy comparison of multiple scenarios. The app’s simple interface, with clean graphics and straightforward adjustment controls, enables the user to adopt a drill-down approach, permitting exploration of queries in real time. When combined, the design aspects and functional usability help to streamline the representative–payor conversation and emphasise the product’s benefits.

Outcome

Embraced by the sales force, the app has been a resounding success. It has empowered our client to engage payors and commissioners and provide a compelling case for its new product’s cost-effectiveness and health benefits in local health economies.

This is excellent! Thank you very much for all your hard work.Senior Director HEOR, EMA

Need

Customer evidence requirements have become increasingly difficult to meet. To communicate the value of their product during customer engagements, our client’s representatives needed to quickly and confidently present evidence that tackles objections.

Solution

Following an in-depth insight phase that defined a framework around which to organise potential objections and the arguments with which they can be countered, we developed an interactive iPad app that enables representatives to rapidly build tailored customer engagement plans based on pre-existing insights. During meetings, the app allows representatives to readily access high-quality, fully referenced and relevant evidence and data to address customer concerns and confidently counter anticipated objections. The app also has the ability to track the frequency and duration of specific content use, and as such, infer the frequency and pattern of objections encountered during customer engagements.

Representatives can use the app in a number of ways. In addition to compiling a general favourites list of responses to common objections, they can build profiles that incorporate responses to objections and concerns anticipated to arise during meetings with specific customers. The process is simplified by the inclusion of a default customer-type profile archive, including, for example, Commissioner, GP and Practice Manager. All objections are dissected to define the underlying interest and technical reasons that may trigger them, helping representatives to understand the underlying motivations behind objections and hone their knowledge and skills.

Outcome

The objection handler and customer engagement app has allowed our client to refocus on an established product with a large amount of supporting data, and deliver clarity of message and focused strategy. Since its launch, the app has enjoyed rapid uptake by the UK commercial team. It was used more than 2,000 times during the first three months of its launch, clearly demonstrating its value on the ground.

One of the best things is that it constantly feeds us data on our customers’ interests and the objections that the team encounter in the field. This means we can review our engagement strategies moving forward and even measure any changes over time.Brand Director, EU